Research

Adkins S, Talmor N, White MH, Dutton C, O’Donoghue AL. Association Between Restricted Abortion Access and Child Entries Into the Foster Care System. JAMA Pediatr. Published online November 06, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.4738 

Media coverage: CNN, US News, Newsweek, Healio, Health Day, BIDMC, Phys.org, Mirage News, The Crimson , MedPage, WFAA

Adkins S. Shifting the Balance: Examining the Impact of Local Labor Market Opportunities on Female Household Bargaining Power in India. Journal of Development Studies. Published online December 07, 2023. 

Beyond the Pandemic: The Equity Implications of Online Learning in Microeconomics for Underrepresented Students (Under Review)

The Covid-19 pandemic created a sudden shift in the necessity for online learning, and though the end of the pandemic has signaled a shift back to more in-person learning, many schools have used the existing infrastructure to expand their offerings of online and hybrid courses. While online and hybrid learning was engaged as a panacea for primary, secondary, and higher educational institutions alike, minimal research has been done on the effectiveness of online learning as compared to classroom learning. I utilize a randomized control trial in an introductory microeconomics course to test whether there are any differences in learning outcomes with a lecture delivered online as compared to in-person. This has important implications for hybrid courses in the future as well as applications to a flipped classroom pedagogy. I find that when students watch a lecture online, they score 5 percentage points lower than attending the same lecture in-person. This estimate is based on an intent-to-treat study design and controls for individual, class section, and topic fixed effects. I also assess heterogeneous effects across various demographic variables, including gender, race, and major, and find that this result is particularly salient for non-White and first-generation students, highlighting the equity implications of moving to online learning.

Do Daycares Affect Maternal Labor? Evidence from India (with Nayantara Biswas)

Daycares have a twofold role in the modern world- realizing the developmental potential for young children and allowing their parents to increase their time in other activities. In this paper, we examine the role of free daycare facilities established by the Indian government in promoting maternal employment in India. We apply a two-way fixed effects model by using the variation in the number of daycare centers located in a district and the age of eligibility of the child. Household surveys provide data on employment of mothers and child's eligibility to attend daycare. Since the decision to work and send one's child to a daycare is endogenous and jointly determined with women's labor market outcomes, we calculate an intent-to-treat effect using district-level daycare availability based on administrative data. We find a positive association between maternal employment and daycare presence for eligible children. Mothers engaged in agricultural and low-skilled manual work drive this result. Particularly, mothers of young boys, with less than three children, who live in a rural household experience an increase in their employment. Child health investments are not sufficient to explain this result, suggesting that increasing the availability of daycares will boost labor force participation for mothers with young children.